[Rarebooks] fa: ATHENIAN MERCURY 1691 - 15 ISSUES - WOMEN'S QUESTIONS: LOVE COURTSHIP & MARRIAGE &c.

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, February 24. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/cndkmtx

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

The Athenian Mercury. [Volume 1] Numbers 13, 14, 18-30. . London: Printed for P. Smart, 1691. Fifteen issues on fifteen folio sheets (32.5 x 19.5 cm.; 12 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.), printed on both sides. Sheets disbound from a nonce volume; light to moderate browning, wear and some modest chipping to the edges, light creases, some occasional spotting and soiling; first issue trimmed slightly at the top and bottom affecting the imprint.

Fifteen issues, including a run of 13 consecutive numbers, from the first volume of the The Athenian Mercury, the best-known and longest-lived of all seventeenth-century literary periodicals. The Mercury was the first newspaper to use the question-and-answer format, making it the first advice column. A widely-read staple of the coffee houses, it is also generally considered the first major popular periodical in England as well as the first miscellaneous periodical, and the first to appeal to both men and women. Published twice weekly from 1691-1697 by the eccentric pamphleteer and prolific publisher John Dunton, the  newspaper took its name from Acts 17:21 ("For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing"). Over the course of its 580 numbers, Dunton and his two principal writers, Richard Sault and Samuel Wesley (father of Charles and John Wesley), answered nearly 6000 questions, both weighty and frivolous, on a dizzying array of topics, including theology, philosophy, politics, health, natural history, science, literature, courtship and marriage, sex, etiquette, etc., etc.

Perhaps uniquely for its time, the Mercury catered to, and encouraged letters from, female readers. Fittingly, the whole of issue no. 18 (May 23, 1691) is devoted to SEVERAL QUESTIONS LATELY SENT US BY A YOUNG GENTLEWOMAN, viz., Whether Beauty be real or imaginary?; Whether it is proper for Women to be Learned?; Whether an Army of Women would not conquer an Army of Men?; etc., and no. 13 (May 5) is devoted entirely to questions related to LOVE, COURTSHIP & MARRIAGE, such as: Whether it is lawful to Marry a Person one cannot Love, only in compliance to Relations, and to get an Estate?; Whether a publick or private Courtship is the best?; Whether the Womans Condition in Marriage be not worse than the Mans?; What way shall a shamefac'd Virgin take to let a Person know she loves him?; etc.

These issues also include many questions and answers related to THEOLOGY, including: How does Gods Prescience consist with Mans free Agency?; Where go the Souls of Good Men immediately after Death?; What was the Question on which Christ disputed in the Temple?; Whether it were the real Samuel, the Devil, or only a Confederate which appear'd to Saul at Endor?; etc., etc. Other topics include: TRANSEXUALITY (Whether there ever were such a thing as Change of Sexes?); ONANISM: (What was the Sin of Onan; whether 'tis possible to be guilty of it now, &c.?); SUICIDE (Of what Degree or Nature is the Sin of selo de fe?); PYGMIES: (Are there any such Creatures as Pigmies?); SIAMESE TWINS (We have an account… of a Monstrous Birth, Two Brothers, born together, both baptized, &c. Query, How shall they arise at the Day of Judgment?); SOOTERKINS (Whence proceeds the Shuterkin?); etc., etc.